Almost Shattered
by Ashley A
Summary: Set shortly post "Grave," BTVS season six.


AN: written for the Female Ficathon for DM Evans.

Set post BTVS season six, post "Grave".

Willow performs a ritual, and lets some things go.

Rated PG-13.

Feedback:  sashabev1.net

Enjoy.

            Hate courses through the young woman's veins, and she gasps with the intensity of it.  Her lover dead, her town almost destroyed by her own hand.

            She'd cry, but she's been crying all day, and frankly, doesn't care to feel the wetness coursing down her cheeks again.  Her face feels like it's been sandblasted, or treated one too many times with one of those micro-derma whatever things Cordy had always talked about.

            "Will?"

            Her head snaps up at the sound of her name, and she wipes at her eyes hastily.

            "Dawny."

            "You okay?  Buffy wanted to know if you wanted anything to eat."

            "No," she says, and realizes that the word has come out a little harsher than she had wanted it to.  "No, thanks, Dawn.  I can manage for now."

            The teenager bobs her head once, and heads out the door.

            She reopens it just as Willow is closing her eyes again, and speaks sofly.

            "I'm glad you're here, Will."

            The Wicca tries on a smile, and hopes she isn't scaring Dawn with the sight of her teeth, too white, too fake an expression on a frozen mask-y face.

            "Thanks, honey."

            Dawn, knowing Willow needs some alone time, shuts the door.

            Willow sighs with the effort of having to talk civily to someone, and lays down on the bed, the bed that was theirs.

            No body there, no blood stains.  None of her things remain, except a few, thoughtfully placed trinkets and pictures of the two of them together.

            Buffy had solicitously boxed up her clothing and important belongings, and had taken them to the basement, until Willow was ready to go through them.

            Ready?  Will she ever be ready to admit that Tara was gone?  That she would never see her sweet, soft face, never touch her golden hair, never kiss-

            The rage shakes Willow's small frame, and she almost shatters from the force of it.

            When darkness falls, after Buffy has come in and checked on her, after they have exchanged a few pleasantries, and the Slayer has assured herself that her best friend isn't going to go all black witch crazy again, Buffy heads to bed, and Willow lays fully clothed in the dimness.

            "You can come with me to England.  The coven wants to help you.  Find your roots.  Ground you, balance your power.  Make you whole again."

            Willow knows Giles is right.  And she's going.  But not til Friday.  And it's only Tuesday right now.

            So she does the only thing she can do, which is get up silently, head to the window, and shimmy down the tree outside of it.

            Buffy's not the only one who can do steath.

            The erupted earth is silent, the top of the temple still sticking out of the soil.  Willow crouches down by it, running her hand over the stone face of the dark goddess she had tried to raise.

            So much anger, so much blankness.

            The only thing that mattered had been the hunt, and the revenge.

            Only then had she thought she could let it be.

            Tara's murder.

            The herbs Willow has in her pocket make a small lump in her pants, and she settles her slender form on the ground in front of the temple as she begins to trace a thin line in a circle around her, breaking up the dirt.

            She crosses her legs, and lays the combination of sweet smelling powders and one sage leaf in a heap on the soil just inside the circle.

            She brings out a zippo lighter that Tara had given her for "Hannumas" last year, with a simple Celtic design carved on it's face.  Lighting the herbs, she closes her eyes, inhaling the scent of the mixed powders, casting her mind back, to a place she hasn't wanted to go.

            She sees Tara as she had been the first time they had met, and the first time they had worked magik together, to keep out the monster that had been chasing them.  Power had burst through both of them when their hands had locked, and Willow had known somehow then that this girl was going to mean something in her life.

            She sees Tara's face when she had found out that Oz had come back, and the look of dejection when the blonde had thought they wouldn't be together.  And then when Willow had explained that she was with the person she loved, how Tara's eyes had lit up, and how they had finally shown each other just what the other one meant.

            She sees them walking in the park, singing that riduculous song, and she sees them in The Bronze, just after Buffy had revealed where she had really been, and she sees Tara move away from her side, even as Willow is sobbing desperately after Buffy's confession.

            She sees them fighting,and she sees her last attempt at reconciliation fail miseably, and she sees Tara leave.

            She sees herself dallying in darker things with Amy Madison, after breaking the spell that had seemed so hard for so long.

            She sees herself almost getting Dawn killed, and she sees herself almost get lost.

            She shatters that time.

            And Tara's not there, but Buffy is.

            She sees herself slowly building her life back, taking things one step at a time, one day at a time as the AA people always say.  She sees herself able to have a conversation with Tara without becoming a bumbling babbling fool.

            And then she sees Tara say the words she had been wanting to hear for what seemed like an eternity.

            "Can you just be kissing me right now?"

            And then she sees the red stain on white cloth, and she sees Tara say her last words.

            "Your shirt…"

            and she crumples to the ground in their room.

            And Willow lives it all again, the transformation, the Hospital where Buffy had lain near death, until Willow had pulled the bullet from her chest.

            She sees her own body drain the books in the upstairs section of the Magic Box, and she watches for the first time her own physical alteration as her ka and spirit absorbed the power and great might present in the dark texts.

            She watches as her hair turns obsidian black, as her veins stand prominent on her forehead.

            She watches as she finds Warren, and she watches as she, Willow Rosenberg, computer geek and best bud of the current Slayer, flays another human being alive.

            She sees herself break apart the jail trying to get to Johnathan and Andrew.

            She sees herself hurt her loved ones as she doggedly persues her vengeance.

            And she sees her oldest, closest, best friend in the whole world change her mind with a short, simple declaration of love.

            Willow's eyes open, and the herbs she is burning have smoldered to a heap of ashes, and the sky is beginning to get that pre-dawn pinky tinge.  She knows she has about an hour before the sun rises.

            She stands, and rubs her hand in the black sooty stuff on the ground in front of her.

            Raising her hand, she places it on the stone of the temple in front of her, and then to her own forehead, and both cheeks.

            The smell calms her, and she begins to say the words of the ancient mantra, her voice cracking at each syllable.

            Kara charana krutam vaak kaayajam karmajam vaa

            Shraven naya najam vaa maanasam vaa paraadham

            Vihita maavihitam vaa sarameta ahamasva

            Jai jai karunabdhe shri maha deva shambhu

            She repeats it over and over, until the tears spill from her eyes, until her face aches, until she's sobbing so violently she collapses to her knees with the weight of her grief.

            And still she says the words.

            Whatever I have done with my hands of feet, or speech, my body or my actions, Whatever I have heard or seen, or thought, all my mistakes, Whether knowingly or unknowingly, please forgive them all.

            As the Sun breaks the horizon, Willow lays on the bare earth, her hand trailing on the edge of the stone goddess's face.

            She feels…

            What doesn't she feel?

            Rage.

            It's gone.

            She's not stupid, she knows she's not healed.  It will take a long time, maybe a lifetime, to heal the wounds of what she has wrought.

            But for now, the ever present and God forgive her comfortable feeling of anger is resting now.

            The birds begin to twitter, and she rouses herself, shaking her head, clearing the cobwebs from the intensity of her ritual.

            She touches the goddess one last time, knowing just how lucky she is to be where she is now, in this moment.

            As she turns to go, a sudden feeling of being watched fills her, and she turns back to the temple.

            A light caress surrounds her, and she can feel her there.

            Something touches her hand, and she puts it to her lips, tears springing anew to her eyes.

            "Tara?" she whispers.

            No physical response..

            But the answer echoes in her heart.

            When Willow sneaks quietly back into the Summers' home, Buffy is there, waiting for her, pacing nervously in her coffee cup pj's.  Willow smiles at her friend; she had always loved those pajamas, which were a gift from Angel, of all people.

            "Will!  Oh my god, are you alright?  I was worried, I just looked in your room, and you weren't there, and the window was open, and I thought…"

            Willow hugs the frazzled blonde, and plops down on the couch.

            "Everything's okay, Buffy.  I just needed…some time."

            Buffy sits next to the redhead, and takes her hand.

            "I get you, Will.  But you know I'm here for you, if you ever need me to be."

            Willow looks at her own hands in her lap, so tiny, so white, and so unassuming.  But she knows better.

            "I know, Buffy.  Thanks.  But what I really need right now is…"

            Buffy tenses, ready for anything.

            "Waffles."

            The Slayer laughs, and the tension is broken like a wave on the nearby beach.

            "That I can do."

            The two girls get up together, and head toward the kitchen.

Fin.


End file.
